Sunday, March 27, 2011

Malaria! – Compiled 1981-1984 (Moabit Musik, 1991)

She gets around the German music scene does this Gudrun Gut lass.

From being a member of the original line up of the groundbreaking and highly influential industrial outfit Einsturzende Neubauten, she moved on to Mania D before forming Malaria!, an astonishing and brilliant all-girl project who’s early works defy easy classification.

This of course raises the question; if the style of Malaria! can’t be easily defined, do they belong here at all? It’s an interesting and difficult question.

I think the answer is best served by saying that Malaria! were in no way a Goth band, but they did like to dabble in the post-punk style that would later become understood as “Goth”, and when they dabbled they did it very, very well. And to amazingly good effect on songs like "Tod / Death" and "Kalte Klares Wasser". The afterthought does occur, that if Malaria! had appeared a decade later, it's easy to imagine that they would have fallen under the Darkwave umbrella.

Tod / Death and Geld / Money appeared on the Malaria! debut full length Emotion (Moabit Musik, 1982)Most of which appears on Compiled. “Kaltes Klares Wasser” appeared on their second Malaria!_...Revisited (ROIR, 1983) and became their main hit although why they opted to wait almost a decade to release it as a single (Moabit Musik, 1991) is anyone’s guess. It didn’t hurt them though, since they got a second bite of the cherry when it was covered (albeit to vastly lesser effect) by ChiKs on Speed (Superstar Recordings, 2001).

Kalte Klares Wasser

Tod

Geld

So, let us return to the question – do they belong on here?
The easy answer is "well...not really”, At least not in any purist sense. Malaria! touched on the Goth subset rather than overlapping it, but their “dabblings” are exceptional. Then, there are also clear overlaps with fellow German artists Lene Lovich, Nena Hagen, X-Mal Deutschland and Einsturstende Neubauten (the last, perhaps inevitable). If you like these artists (and chances are if you’re reading this site, then you probably do), then Goth or not, you want this album.
That Malaria! have been lost to time is simply criminal.
Highly recommended.

Gudrun Gut went onto the band Matador and continues to run the record labels Monika Enterprise and Moabit Musik while co-hosting a weekly radio show Ocean Club in Berlin and releasing a number of albums, both solo and in collaboration with Myra Davies.

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A Welcome and Introduction

Plunder the Tombs was started back in 2010 by way of looking back on a musical past that I felt in sore need of curation.

It was a strange and sad time when what passed for “Goth” in clubs seemed a pale imitator of what once was, following first a decade of cookie-cutter Sisters of the Nephilim clone bands and then another decade of industrial dance being palmed off to younger audiences as a type of faux goth. When on rare occasion DJs in “Goth” clubs did finally become brave enough to play something like Bauhaus it was not untypical to have the dance floor clear, and it became obvious that the memory, meaning and legacy of much that had gone before had been lost.

It’s probably safe to say that the boundaries of what was “Goth” were never clearly defined. An absolute blessing for those bands on the original scene before it had a name pinned to the donkey, but an outright curse for those who came later and found rules had been imposed to dictate that which was and that which was not acceptable. Worse still was to come in the 90s from a lazy and unquestioning media who simply assumed that anything that wore black and make up was by definition “Goth”, thus allowing all manner of pretenders licence, and maximising confusion as to what the term actually referred to.

This has gone on for way too long and its time is at an end. Neo Post-Punk bands now proliferate across Europe, old long dead Goth bands rise from their crypts in the UK, and new deathrock bands are breeding like rabbits up the west coast of America. It is time to reclaim our scene back from metal bands and ravers in disguise.

While the Plunder the Tombs of old focused on what had gone before, there are now far too many exciting new things to ignore. We roar back to life in a reboot, covering past , present and things yet to come.

Let us plunder the tombs….

About Me

A DJ throughout the 90s at numerous Goth night clubs in Perth including The Cell, Dominion and others he was probably far too drunk to remember, largely as a result of his preference to work for bar tabs over cash. Also helped found 6RTR fm's Goth & Industrial showcase Darkwings.
More recent projects include the currently dormant Descent - a small night dedicated to playing genuinely good Goth music both old and new in preference to packing the dance floor with songs everyone had heard 20 million times before. He currently runs a monthly show on Behind the Mirror on 6RTR fm which can be heard on Wednesdays at 11pm WST.
Rumour has it he once masterminded an ill-advised Goth fanzine "Small Pleasures" that in retrospect, he remains profoundly grateful never made it off his desk.